Destiny: The Taken King

Destiny: The Taken King
Cover art featuring the three character classes wielding their new subclass abilities and a silhouette of Oryx
Developer(s)Bungie
Publisher(s)Activision
Director(s)Luke Smith
Writer(s)Clay Carmouche
Composer(s)
SeriesDestiny
Platform(s)
Release
  • WW: September 15, 2015
Genre(s)Action role-playing, first-person shooter
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Destiny: The Taken King is a major expansion for Bungie's first-person shooter, Destiny. Released on September 15, 2015, as the third expansion of Destiny, it revolves around Oryx, The Taken King and his plot for revenge after players slew his son Crota in Destiny's first downloadable content (DLC) pack, The Dark Below. Players must face the "Taken", Oryx's army of corrupted aliens forced to fight for him. The Taken King adds content across the game, including new missions, a Player versus Environment location, Player versus Player maps, player gear, weaponry, and a new raid. Upon the expansion's release, retailers also issued Destiny: The Taken King Legendary Edition which includes Destiny (base game), The Taken King, and the previous two expansions, The Dark Below and House of Wolves.

Two days after its release, Sony announced that the game broke the record for the most downloaded day-one game in PlayStation history, in terms of both total players and peak online concurrency.[1] Its release coincided with patch version 2.0 for Destiny, which made fundamental changes to the core functionality for all players to mark the start of "Year Two" of its lifecycle, including a new quest system and revisions to the game's leveling system among others. Through the development of The Taken King, Bungie sought to address criticisms from players and critics; many changes to the game were direct responses to this.[2]

The Taken King and its associated patch received positive critical reception, with reviewers citing the more coherent storyline of the content contained within, as well as other changes across Destiny as a whole that improved its overall systems and gameplay mechanics.[3][4]

  1. ^ Parfitt, Ben (September 18, 2015). "Destiny: The Taken King claims PSN's records". MCV - UK. Archived from the original on 2015-10-22. Retrieved 2015-10-23.
  2. ^ Hern, Alex (September 22, 2015). "Destiny: The Taken King review: finally, the game it should have been". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 30, 2021. Retrieved September 30, 2021.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference ign-review was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ McElroy, Griffin; Sarkar, Samit (September 28, 2015). "Destiny: The Taken King review". Polygon. Archived from the original on September 30, 2021. Retrieved September 30, 2021.